You can follow us @Areme1
sources thisbeatgoes.com As Ja Rule’s Pain Is Love 2 album releases, it’s hard to believe
that it has over a decade since the first Pain is Love dropped. That album absolutely dominated the radio and charts in 2001, going triple platinum, and appeased fans of pop and hip hop alike. Along with its predecessor, Rule 3:36, the project catapulted Ja to the top spot in the commercial hip hop arena. To make a comparison for you younger fans, he was the Lil Wayne of his day.
A lot has changed since then. 50 Cent (with some help from Dr. Dre and Eminem) basically put his career in a body bag. After his star started to fade, he ended up with a weapons charge that landed him in prison. Once in jail, he received another 28 months tacked onto his gun charge for tax evasion. Before he went in, he recorded this project, and it’s going to be a while before he gets out.
Even so, tomorrow marks the release of the follow up to the album that brought him all his fame, Pain is Love 2. Don’t let its number of features from R&B/pop singers fool you. This is NOT the sweet, love song making Ja Rule that were used to it. It’s surprisingly dark, at times intellectual, and for the most part, a disenchanting look at stardom. While it’s a completely new look for Ja, and pretty surprising to be honest, it might be some of his best work to date. There are plenty of rappers that could pull of a full project discussing the dark side of fame, but none of them were ever as successful as Ja Rule was. It’s an extremely unique experience, and he has literally had it all and lost it. It creates an extremely honest feel from start to finish, and it’s definitely welcome in the stale superficiality that’s prevalent in a good portion of modern hip hop. The writing and lyricism are easily the strongest points of the Pain Is Love 2 album. Ja Rule’s never been the best technical rapper, or known for witty word play, and that doesn’t change here. But, the subject matter is fresh, and its full of the type of wisdom that only pain and bad experiences can bring. While there aren’t too many bars that would make you sit back and say, “Damn!” there’s an awful lot to think about. From a lyrical standpoint, the strongest track is probably Pain Is Love 2′s last, “Spun A Web (feat. Amia), where you can find these gems “A prisoner of my own success/ but hardly caring enough to know that I’m dead without it.”, and “Diary of monster/Sometimes my mind fades to a place not even I can explain/ Cause theres a thin line between genius and insane/Guess which one I am, I think it’s obvious/”. While those might be a few of the album’s lyrical highlights, they’re definitely indicative of its overall tone and feel. Pain Is Love 2 might be a new and mostly impressive vibe for Ja Rule, but it isn’t without it’s few allusions to the older days either. There are a few “love” songs that attempt to be little more mainstream friendly, and they’re hit or miss. “Black Vodka” is the one that really works, and is one of my personal favorites on the album. “Never Had Time” and “Strange Days” on the other hand rely on some gimmicky production and weak hooks, and don’t work nearly as well. They definitely throw off the momentum of the album as a whole too.
The two large drawbacks that this one has its lack of truly polished production, and the occasionally inexplicable beat selection. The mixing is poorly done in some cases, and Ja’s gritty voice can drown into the background at times. I also would have loved to see some darker beat selection to go along with the subject matter. The sound that some of the “softer” songs bring is reminiscent of second rate “hip pop” stuff that you’d hear from some of the larger labels’ B-squad artists. Admittedly, it might be a too much little to ask for big budget production from a guy serving time for tax evasion though.
Overall P.I.L. 2 is a very good, but not great album. It very well could have been with a larger budget and more time, but Ja didn’t have either of those for obvious reasons. It marks a new chapter in the career of one of commercial hip hop’s most important artists, and the growth and pain he’s gone through is obvious. It was a pleasant surprise for all of the right reasons, and I’d love to see something along these lines from other older artists who “fell off”.
If you’ve been a fan of popular hip hop since Ja Rule was dominating sales charts, I highly recommend you at least give it a chance. If you’re a young fan of the genre, who wants to expand your knowledge of what hip hop was ten years ago, I recommend you give some of his older stuff a listen first, then try this one on for size afterwards. It’ll be an interesting ride, I promise you that.
No comments:
Post a Comment